Science of Signs.

Semiotics are widely used in our daily lives. You can relate semiotics from a movie, an advertisement.. To be short, it's everything. Even from a lamp we can have many things to talk about, including the material used, the shape, the tone of the light, etc. What is your semiotic analysis for the lamp below?

Comment below! :)

The most common thing to relate semiotics shall be the signs and symbol. You can find it everywhere!

       

   

We can actually know what is it trying to tell us by just looking at it. We do not necessarily need words to comunicate, we can communicate visually too! How interesting is that. Also we can see that red colour is used for some of the above symbols, so that people can be aware of it. Not only because red is a vibrant colour which easily catches our eyes, red means danger too. 

Now let's look at this photo captured from the library, but not the library in our school.

Photo taken poorly by my friend, haha.

What is your feelings towards this photo? The library looks very bright because of the white walls and tables. It gives the library a spacious feeling. Also i think that it's actually quite a good and suitable place to study! Studying in a clear and bright room will definitely gives us less distraction and increase our studying efficiency.

Now what about this..

It's me again.

The library has a warmer and cosier feeling now. It looks less bright compared to the previous photo with a slightly orange tone. I would definitely fall asleep in this library. It looks so comfortable! The orange tone of the library actually reminds me of sunset which means it's time to go home for dinner! Yay!

Now this!

And again.

Eww. Looks eerie because of the greenish effect. I hope the library is not haunted.. Too bad the light from the window spoiled everything. If not it will look creepier much. Who wants to go for an adventure to a library like this at the middle of the night? :p

So which photo would you choose if you were to do an advertisement for the library?

Well, it depends on what messages are you trying to tell and what feeling are you trying to give.

Semiotics is absolutely important in advertisements. The colour that you chose or the effects that you used does make a difference! People can actually receive different messages by using the same material, just like the above example.

I hope I didn't go off topic for semiotic!

- All photos were taken from my phone! Credits to Instagram and Camera360 :)
- Edited on 30th August 2012, 18:00.

Media Literacy.

Media nowadays are very powerful. As we all know, we rely on the mass media because we need them to catch up with the latest news, get information, for entertainment and so on. Media are also used to make profits or to convey messages to the public, for example the social networking sites and advertisements.

But what are these related to media literacy skills? When you are watching an advertisement or a movie, do you ever think of what are the messages they are trying to tell? Or can you interpret it with your own point of view?  Sometimes, what we see are not always the truth. A picture speaks a thousand words! This is why we need media literacy skills. If we do not have these skills, we are just like a blind consumer being controlled by the media.

Must not be controlled !

A smart consumer should have the ability to think critically, and this is what Mr. Hardip always tells us. A simple message can have different interpretations, it depends on ourselves. There is no right or wrong so we should know how to differentiate on what to believe.

Arrows or the letter C ?

I always thought that the Carrefour logo is just arrows but apparently the answer is no. One day someone shared on Facebook telling me that actually a C is hidden in between the arrows, and I was like..

Some people also interpreted that the C stands for customers and the arrows stands for from all directions. What about you? While searching for this Carrefour logo, I found out that many other logos have hidden messages too. And with some creativity blended with the message.. Tadah! A brilliant logo is produced.

To be honest, I am lacking this media literacy skills as I always see things on the surface. When someone is trying to tell me a message in another way, I get stuck. When a movie is too deep to fathom, my mind will go like "?!?!?!??!" while other people can understand it.

For example the movie The Dark Knight Rises, everyone knows that it is a superhero movie which Batman tries to save Gotham City, portraying the war between good and evil and many more. But what is the message behind? Can you relate it to our lives? Seriously I have no idea, because I didn't make an effort to understand the story.

On the other hand, my friend has his very own interpretation about the movie, which he wrote the following on his Facebook status. As it is written in chinese, I roughly translated it as follow:

"...This movie happens to hold the same view with the current issues nowadays face by the government of all countries. The confidence and support of the citizen are shaken. Their trust is betrayed. The director also portrayed the dilemma facing by the people in society, together with the revolution of anti-government organization. People can actually see the darkness of reality which is hidden in real life through this movie..."

I am impressed.

Well maybe not all the things that he said were right, but at least he made his effort to understand and appreciate the movie. And of course the most important thing is that he is thinking critically. *Ashamed*

Well I guess I should start developing my media literacy skills from now on, and everyone should too. Being media literate is not easy but we should try to change.

The way I see things shall never be the same. And I guess this is what media literacy is all about.

;)





P/s: Did you realize that I mentioned Facebook twice in this post? This is how media makes an impact in our lives!